News & Events
Media and Creative Industries Research Seminars Series - CDI @ Warwick's Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies (Winter Term)
Narratives from the creative sector often center on those who, despite the challenges, manage to keep going and eventually thrive in the cultural sector or as creative professionals. The focus on quitting brings under the spotlight the others, those who, after a series of attempts at staying in the creative industries, left the sector. This presentation centers on the case of Italian graduates from a creative writing program, and it investigates their biographies and reasons for quitting. It argues that in their cases, quitting depended on a set of expectations about the meanings and practices of work in culture and on their refusal to adhere to a series of implicit rules that they had to conform to if they wanted to stay in the publishing industry.
October, 18th - 13:00 - 14:00 FAB 1.01
Medical Influencers in the Wellness Realm: Lifestyle Expertise and the Wuestion of Credentials - Rachel O'Neill (LSE)
Existing literature on wellness influencers takes for granted that such individuals lack accredited expertise, and further contends that their popularity indexes widespread public distrust in experts generally and medical professionals especially. These arguments overlook the existence of medical doctors who are themselves wellness influencers — who share dietary and lifestyle advice on social media, participate in industry trends and conventions, and monetise their followings through sponsored content and other commercial ventures. In this talk I introduce the figure of the medical influencer or 鈥榤edfluencer鈥� as an object of critical enquiry, using a series of case study subjects from the UK context. Demonstrating the extent to which such individuals reproduce rather than resolve the tensions said to characterise their unaccredited counterparts, I argue that credentials are not in themselves sufficient to undo the problematics associated to wellness influencing and, moreover, may open out new realms of conflict and contradiction.
November 1st, FAB 1.01 13:00 - 14:00
Mixed Feelings: on the Platformisation of Moods and 鈥榁ibes鈥� - Ludmilla Lupinacci (Leeds)
Over the past few years, digital platforms have increasingly tailored their content to both respond to and create certain moods, vibes, atmospheres or ambiences (Roquet 2016). This trend has indeed begun to spark discussion on whether platforms such as TikTok represent the end of 鈥榮ocial media鈥� as we know it, as the centrality of networks and interpersonal interactions is replaced by self-indulgent activities such as mindless scrolling. Engaging with those debates, in this presentation I will offer a critical assessment of social media鈥檚 current experiential turn and its specificities, and propose a critical-phenomenological framework for the theorisation of this ongoing shift precisely at the intersection of embodied affect and the political economy of platformisation. I take moods, 鈥榲ibes鈥� and their mediation to be both foundational to embodied experience and yet deeply embedded in socio-technical and material practices (Highmore 2013). In this regard, this presentation also aims to engage with a discussion on how, through processes of datafication, personalisation, standardisation, and algorithmitisation (Stark 2020) bodily states such as moods become practices that can be managed through social media once those technologies become central to contemporary 鈥榬egimes of sensory calibration鈥� (Starosielski 2021).
Social Networks: Exploring and Visualising with Gephi
Do you want to learn a new skill in this Autumn Term? Network analysis offers an interesting way of exploring and visualising networks between social, economic, and political actors.
In this workshop, we explore how to use the Gephi software to visualise and understand a 17th Century network. We will explore the network and consider what the patterns in the data suggest. You are encouraged to prepare for the session by reading the links from the , but this is not essential if you do not have time beforehand.
This workshop will be led by Dr Godwin Yeboah and Dr James Tripp who are Senior Research Software Engineers and part of the "Research Computing" team in the Research and Technology Platforms (they are also part of the Centre for Digital Inquiry).
Please read more (and register if interested or share) using the following webpage.
Mastodon Research Event (CFP): June 2023
Call for Presentations
Social Networks: Exploring and Visualising with Gephi
Do you want to learn a new skill in this Spring Term? Network analysis offers an interesting way of exploring and visualising networks between social, economic, and political actors.
In this workshop, we explore how to use the Gephi software to visualise and understand a 17th Century network. We will explore the network and consider what the patterns in the data suggest. You are encouraged to prepare for the session by reading the links from the , but this is not essential if you do not have time beforehand.
This workshop will be led by Dr Godwin Yeboah and Dr James Tripp (of the newly formed Information and Digital Group Technology for Research; they are also part of the Centre for Digital Inquiry).
Please read more (and register if interested or share) using the following webpage.
How to create a map for print and web using QGIS
Do you want to learn a new skill in this Spring Term? Have you ever thought of creating a basic map for a presentation or publication? What about creating an interactive web map for your own website or just to experiment how that will look in an internet browser? If you answered yes to any of these questions, and you are in Warwick, this workshop is for you!
In this introductory course, we will give you an overview on how to use different cartographic techniques to effectively present outcomes of digital data exploration using QGIS software. We assume no prior knowledge of GIS (Geographic Information System) and will explain how to get data into the GIS as well as how to produce maps using data. The workshop lead is Dr Godwin Yeboah (g.yeboah at warwick.ac.uk).
How to create a map for print and web using QGIS
Do you want to learn a new skill in this Autumn Term? Have you ever thought of creating a basic map for a presentation or publication? What about creating an interactive web map for your own website or just to experiment how that will look in an internet browser? If you answered yes to any of these questions, and you are in Warwick, this workshop is for you!
In this introductory course, we will give you an overview on how to use different cartographic techniques to effectively present outcomes of digital data exploration using QGIS software. We assume no prior knowledge of GIS (Geographic Information System) and will explain how to get data into the GIS as well as how to produce maps using data. The workshop lead is Dr Godwin Yeboah (g.yeboah at warwick.ac.uk).
How to Think About Digital Subjectivity, Nov 18th, 10am-3pm
In this intimate workshop, Olga Goriunova, Tony Sampson, and Nate Tkacz, will present their recent work. Through notions of 'conceptual personae' (Sampson), 'model characters' (Goriunova) and 'primal users' (Tkacz), each will present a different way to think about digital subjectivity. The workshop is open, but places are limited.
Register here: /fac/cross_fac/cdi/news-events/registration_digital_subjectivity
Tony Sampson's Guide to A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media
Join us for a discussion about Tony Sampson's new work of dystopian media theory. Here's a description of the book:
Positing online users as 'sleepwalkers', Tony Sampson offers an original and compelling approach for understanding how social media platforms produce subjectivities.
Drawing on a wide range of theorists, including A.N. Whitehead and Gabriel Tarde, he provides tools to track his sleepwalker through the 'dark refrain of social media': a refrain that spreads through viral platform architectures with a staccato-like repetition of shock events, rumours, conspiracy, misinformation, big lies, search engine weaponization, data voids, populist strongmen, immune system failures, and far-right hate speech. Sampson's sleepwalker is not a pre-programmed smartphone junkie, but a conceptual personae intended to dodge capture by data doubles and lookalikes. Sleepwalkers are neither asleep nor wide awake; they are a liminal experimentation in collective mimicry and self-other relationality. Their purpose is to stir up a new kind of community that emerges from the potentialities of revolutionary contagion.
At a time in which social media is influencing more people than ever, A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media is an important reference for students and scholars of media theory, digital media and social media.
Details:
November 17th, 4:00-5:30 pm
Online and in person
Register: /fac/cross_fac/cdi/news-events/sampson_registrationLink opens in a new window
Communities and Algorithms: Epistemological Questions for a Critical Network Science
The CDI is delighted to host Dominik Schindler and Matthew Fuller, who will share their current research, Communities and Algorithms: Epistemological Questions for a Critical Network Science, with the CDI community at Warwick. The talk is facilitated by British Academy Posdoctoral Fellow Patrick Brian Smith.
Details: 23rd May, 2pm, room FAB2.43 (in-person event), (click item heading for extended outline)
Register: please email patrick.smith.1@warwick.ac.uk to register your interest to attend.
Computer Vision for the Humanities: An Introduction to AI Deep Learning for Image Classification
How might we better understand, explore and investigate the diverse range of images we encounter in the humanities?
A two day in-person workshop convened by the Centre for Digital Inquiry. Led by , Digital Curator, British Library.
Please read more and register here.